Coinbase’s Ethereum L2 Blockchain, Base, Gears Up for Mainnet Launch

In a recent blog post published on June 29th, 2023, the team behind Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) blockchain incubated by Coinbase, unveiled their comprehensive security measures in anticipation of their highly anticipated mainnet launch. With a bold vision of onboarding millions of developers and billions of users onto their platform, Base understands that robust security is an indispensable cornerstone of their mission.

Base’s foundation lies on the OP Stack, a collaborative effort between Base and Optimism. By leveraging the extensive security work accomplished by the OP Labs team and the wider Optimism community, Base has built a sturdy framework from the ground up. Coinbase’s Protocol Security team conducted a meticulous internal audit to fortify the OP Stack’s security even further.

Over the past six months, the Protocol Security team has worked closely with OP Labs, undertaking an in-depth evaluation of the Base and Optimism ecosystems. Their efforts involved conducting thorough audits of all Optimism pre-deploys and contracts on L1 and L2 to identify potential vulnerabilities or risks lurking within the technology stack.

Before the highly anticipated mainnet launch, Base actively engaged the wider community through a remarkable initiative known as the public smart contract audit contest hosted by Code4rena. This competition beckoned security researchers from around the globe to scrutinize every nook and cranny of the OP Stack, searching for any lurking bugs or vulnerabilities. The response was overwhelming, with over 100 security researchers eagerly participating in the contest. The remarkable outcome? No significant vulnerabilities were discovered, attesting to the robustness of the Base’s security infrastructure.

In addition to securing the core OP Stack codebase, Base is developing an open-source monitoring tool, Pessimism. This cutting-edge tool will promptly notify stakeholders of any irregularities or anomalies detected within the protocol and network. It works harmoniously with existing monitoring tools from OP Labs, Coinbase’s in-house blockchain monitoring capabilities, and third-party tools, ensuring a comprehensive safety net for the entire ecosystem.

The base is also crafting a smart contract security scanning tool as part of its unwavering commitment to developers. This invaluable resource will empower developers to reduce the likelihood of introducing security vulnerabilities in their contracts. By enabling quick and easy contract scanning, this tool amalgamates the results from multiple open-source vulnerability detection tools, including Coinbase’s proprietary secure trait analyzer, thus significantly bolstering the overall security posture of developers on the platform.

With an unyielding focus on security, Base is poised to revolutionize the Ethereum ecosystem, providing a safe and scalable platform for the next million developers and billion users. As their mainnet launch draws near, the meticulous efforts put forth by the Base team and the invaluable collaboration with Optimism and Coinbase’s Protocol Security team position them as pioneers in secure Layer 2 solutions, ready to shape the future of blockchain technology.